Affordable housing summit to share knowledge, seek inspiration
The City of Edmonton will convene housing leaders from across the Prairies from May 11 to 14 in an effort to advance affordable and non-market housing.
Housing Forward builds off of a one-day symposium the city held in the fall. The four-day symposium is the logical next step, in part because Edmonton has lessons to share, and in part because it wants to learn what's next, said Stuart Kehrig, director of the city's Housing Action Team.
"Since 2019, we've increased our housing inventory by more than 40%, so we have some successes that we want to share with others, but it's also continuous improvement," Kehrig told Taproot. "What can we do better? What can we learn?" He added that Edmonton's progress has depended on collaboration with affordable housing providers and other partners, and the summit is intended to build capacity across the sector.
Edmonton's affordable housing needs assessment, released in August 2023, found that one out of every four renter households in the city is in core housing need, meaning they struggle to cover housing costs or live in crowded or unsafe homes and can't afford to move. The city is projected to have more than 56,000 households in core housing need by 2031. Administration estimates that it needs nearly 40,000 additional subsidized housing units to meet the demand. It's using the Housing Accelerator Fund from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to help it get there, with funds going toward developing surplus school sites for affordable housing, waiving some fees, and prioritizing permit applications for subsidized housing projects.
The summit expects 500 or more delegates from across the Prairies, including housing providers, government representatives, developers, designers, builders, funders, researchers, and Indigenous housing leaders. The agenda includes sessions on topics such as innovative delivery, financing and land models, planning reform, climate-resilient design, sector sustainability, and Indigenous leadership in housing.
The conference is intentionally focused on the Prairies. While Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal are each hundreds of years old, Prairie cities have only been around for about a century, Kehrig said.
"We're so young as far as cities go, and the way that the growth patterns have looked, they are much different than Ottawa, Toronto, and some of those other bigger centres," he said. "Some of the market dynamics are different, too — the cost of land in Toronto could be 25% of your full project cost, for example, where in Edmonton, it's not quite the same."
